S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike

'''Solomon West Ridgeway Dias "S.W.R.D." Bandaranaike''' (8 January 1899-26 September 1959) was the Prime Minister of Ceylon from 12 April 1956 to 26 September 1959, succeeding John Kotelawala and preceding Wijeyananda Dahanayake. Bandaranaike was the founder of the social democratic Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and his wife Sirimavo Bandaranaike took over the party after his assassination by a Buddhist monk in 1959.

Biography
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was born in Columbo, Ceylon on 8 January 1899, and he was educated there and at Oxford University before becoming a lawyer. Bandaranaike became active in politics during the 1920s, and he founded the Sinhala Maha Sabha party in 1936 in a successful bid to create power base among Sinhalese and Buddhist groups. He brought his movement into the United National Party and served as Minister of Health and Local Government from 1948 to 1951. In 1951, he left the UNP to found the Sinhalese socialist Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which attracted support from the political center, as well as Sinhalese and Buddhist interest groups. He won the 1956 election, and he sought to realize his election promises to speical interest grouips. He made Sinhalese the official language of Sri Lanka without concessions to the minority Tamils, aggravating the tensions between the two communities. He supported non-alignment in foreign policy and socialism in domestic policies, and he was accused of initiating the racial discords in the country. On 26 September 1959, he was shot and killed by Buddhist monk Talduwe Somarama for his refusal to give a shipping contract to a Buddhist chief priest. His wife Sirimavo Bandaranaike would continue his socialist reforms as Prime Minister.